Benefits of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is something that has become more widely used across business in recent years. With the technology improving it enables businesses to communicate with partners and customers and have meetings without leaving the office. There are a number of benefits to video conferencing.



Video conferencing can have a big impact on productivity. It means you can have several meetings in one day and can do them all from the same place instead of travelling from location to location.



Being capable of having video conferences means decisions can be made more quickly. If something needs to be discussed it may be possible to have a meeting immediately to talk about the issues. In normal circumstances it might take a lot of planning, with all parties needing to find space in their diary, not just for the meeting but to get to and from it. This can mean weeks, rather than minutes or hours, before a meeting has taken place and decisions have been made. It is much simpler for everyone to log onto the video conferencing software and do it immediately if possible.



Investing in video conferencing software can be expensive to begin with but if used regularly will save money in the long run. As well as the financial benefits of improving productivity the major cost savings are on travel costs. Constantly travelling to and from meetings can be expensive, especially if many people are involved. This may not be much of an advantage if all of your customers and partners are local, but could save a fortune if they are across the country or even international.



With video conferencing someone can be “at a meeting” just like that. This can make a big saving on travel time to and from meetings. Without it a one-hour meeting can take a full day; there might be two hours of travelling each way with contingency time taken into consideration. If you have video conferencing you can go into the relevant room a few minutes before the meeting and be back at your desk immediately after.



The above are benefits of video conferencing over physically going to a meeting. You may think that it would be cheaper to have telephone conferences, but there are benefits to video conferencing over telephone conferencing. You can see the faces of the people you are having the conference with. This may not always be necessary, but it is surprising how much of a benefit seeing the other person/people can be. A large part of communication is expression, be it facial expressions or body expressions. You can also sense if someone wants to say something or someone has finished talking. This prevents people from constantly talking over each other.



Video conferencing can be a great benefit to many businesses, especially those with a wide customer based. It has many of the advantages of physical meetings but without the disadvantages. You are able to communicate properly with people and see them, but don’t have to spend time and money travelling to meetings.



Andrew Marshall ©